What’s better than 1 HDR photo? A really big panoramic photo. But in this case I was light on gear. Here was my shooting process.

The Shoot

  1. I set my camera to a higher ISO and midrange f-stop so it would shoot fast (IS0 400 at 14).
  2. I shot a 5 shot bracket with each shot 1 stop apart.
  3. I tucked my elbows in for stability and shot handheld.
  4. I panned to get 30% overlap between the shots.

hdrburst

The result… 55 images ready to process.

The Post

I ran the images through two apps to get the end result.

First up was Photomatix Pro where I did a batch operation. This made it easy to process all of the images at once. To make it easy, I just picked 3 of my favorite subtle presets and let it rip. A few minutes later I had all my merged files.

Once done, the images were stitched using Photomerge inside Photoshop. The Adaptive Wide Angle Command straightened the image and Content Aware Fill took care of the gaps. A quick use of adjustment layers and a quick selection and I had my finished results.

HawaiianVillage

__________________________